Listen, Lucy is a place to express yourself.

Freely.

Creatively.

Anonymously.

To find comfort in seeing that you are not alone.

Listen, Lucy:

I never really had it easy, the first thing that went wrong was when my biological father and my mom divorced, I was three and didn't understand it at the time. I then lived with my mom and saw my father on the weekends, he once promised me he'd always tell me the truth no matter what. I come to find, when I was twelve, that my father was an alcoholic, a gambler, and had emotionally abused my mom. Not only that but he was racist and possibly homophobic, considering I'm big on equality and I recently found out at the time I was pansexual and had a crush on my best friend of the same gender, and my step dad who was a better father than him was African American, I was very angry at this side of him. Though the part i hated the most? The lying to me, and the abuse of my mom, even after they separated. He called my stepdad the "n word" and called my mom a "welfare bum" while he was drunk. I also found he was usually hungover while I was at his house. One time, he forgot to pick me up, so my mom took me to work with her, and I was behind her desk, crying my eyes out, asking why my daddy didn't love me anymore. I was about, 5 or 7 at the time.

When I was 11-12, I was constantly bullied. I ended up really depressed, I started having nightmares, which lead to images, which lead to seeing things, shadows move, figures in the windows. I got insomnia and paranoia, I felt I HAD to stay up with a weapon in my hand, pacing around my room all night because I felt if I didn't, something would break into the house and kill my parents. I never thought of suicide, but I once saw terrible images of my own suicide in different ways, It horrified me so badly that I broke down crying for an hour. After that point I got scared of myself, what if I hurt someone? What if I killed somebody? I was scared of everything and everyone, I pushed people away, never left my room.

None of my teachers noticed my changes, but my mom heard my pacing and it worried her, I would pace so loudly that I'm sure anyone in the house could hear me. That's when my mom took me to a therapist, though, they switched me around so much that I never got one for more than a month. It was horrible because at that point I was a complete mess and couldn't leave the house without sticking practically to my mom's hip, it was because I was so terrified of the world around me and everything in it, I shut myself out for a long time. After that I got a different therapist entirely, that's when I learned I had depression, panic attack disorder, anxiety disorder, trust issues, abandonment issues and a lot more. I felt like for once in my life I was getting some answers.

Nowadays I'm on anxiety meds and something for my hallucinations, my nightmares have stopped and my father is out of my life. It's better now but I still have a lot of problems and can still barely function in society. I'm trying to get better but it seems like every time I get someone in my life who I want to stay they leave, they come into my life, help me, start fading from the relationship, pretty much kick my heart, then leave.